


All for Freedom and for Pleasure

by MonstrousRegiment



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Odin's A+ Parenting, The movie Hela should have gotten, bitches getting shit done, but still, don't @ me I LOVED Ragnarok
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-06-26 12:15:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15663039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonstrousRegiment/pseuds/MonstrousRegiment
Summary: In which Hela is moderately sane, becomes Queen, gets everyone's shit together, and saves the Universe from Thanos mostly because she really wishes men would stop wasting her fucking time already.'And,' Hela said patiently. 'that makes them our tributary states, and they have paid their bloody taxes, and so I do believe that keeping a madman from exterminating half the known universe counts as a service we should provide. Additionally, consider this: I am your Queen, and if you keep arguing with me I will have Fenris eat you starting with the feet, and for his size I assure you he as a remarkably slow eater. Any further arguments?''Rhetorical question,' Loki hissed at Thor.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I have not written anything in months. This struck me yesterday because I saw Cate Blanchett and remembered she is a treasure and a gift to mankind and I feel much more could have been done with and for Hela. 
> 
> Also, I'm from Argentina, so right now I'm particularly into a bit of female empowerment.

In the aftermath, she walked the field among their dead and broken bodies, and didn’t revel. She stepped over their swords and dodged around their torn, stained cloaks, moved nimbly away from their tangled braids and outstretched bloodied limbs.

One of them yet lived. She had run, a novelty for her kind, but Hela could not blame her. What passed for sunset in her prison had fallen upon the land, and in the brittle half-light Hela felt no victory or rage.

Her father was a good king, but a mediocre general. Hela was too powerful for the Valkyrie, too old. The Einherjar might have stood a better chance, with a worthy leader, or more likely the Berserkers could have stopped her. But Odin had misjudged – not for the first or surely last time. He had come down himself to grave her with his presence and had the gall to look disappointed in her.

Disappointment!

 _Well, get in line_ , Hela thought bitterly, surveying the field of dead Valkyrie at her feet with nothing like pleasure. _There’s plenty of it to go around_.

The Valkyrie should never have come here. Of course, if a life needed to be wasted, Odin would choose the Valkyrie – he barely understood them and didn’t know the first thing about how to command them. They honestly baffled him. Most female creatures did. The wisdom he’d traded an eye for had apparently not come with an addendum on how females work and think.

And Odin didn’t like what he didn’t understand.

Hela had been foolish and unwise, and the imprisonment, though irritating, was fair. Hela was now certain Odin had meant to throw her down into the abyss and entirely forget her existence, when at the beginning she had thought he was simply venting and would soon enough come around to his senses.

Really, she should have known better. Odin, reasonable? Rarely. Only when Frigga cared to intervene, and of course Frigga was no friend of Hela – perhaps they might have bee, if Hela had not been such a little shit upon the marriage, but then Hela had been an angry, spiteful, impatient child, and Frigga had been slow to transition from Valkyrie to Queen.

Frigga would likely make a fine Queen, but she hadn’t quite figured out the mothering part yet. Well, now she would have to – Asgard would need an heir, if Odin meant to conveniently forget he had one lined up already.

She didn’t need to wonder how he would go about it. The story would be simple enough. He would tell Asgard that their general had attempted to escape her rightful imprisonment, that the Valkyrie had lead a noble fight and perished in battle attempting to save the realm.

It wouldn’t even be a lie. Hela had not meant to battle, but after a long time in this miserable realm she’d grown tired to waiting to be forgiven. The punishment grew long, and there was no sign that she’d be taken to review at the end of any specified period of time, and honestly. Was he going to sulk about her rebellion for eternity? She’d razed entire realms for him, massacred armies, slaughtered thousands, but step a toe out of line in his general direction, and he hit you with the disappointed eye.

That is, if he told them anything at all. After all, nobody had asked about Bors, though he’d been king before Odin and the circumstances of his demise were suspicious at best. Look at it with a keener eye, and the murder was clear enough, but then nobody wanted to look at Odin with any sort of a keen eye.

He mostly wasn’t a raging psychopath, which was one up on Bors already, anyway.

Well, Odin might succeed in erasing Hela from the history of Asgard’s golden age of expansion. He might father a cute, blonde, rosy-cheeked and blue-eyed child to call his heir, might instill upon the child ideals of nobility and kindness. Might even bring the child up to be a somewhat worthy contender, if Frigga could be bothered to pay attention to childrearing.

But Hela was not dead, and defeat was but a temporary situation.

Odin could insist to be a fool, but even he was not immortal – especially if he kept bringing up his children only to discard them. One of them would eventually snap. Heads would roll. Hela would like to watch.

She would bide her time. Any general worth the weight of their sword knew when the time came to wait.

“Well,” she said, putting her hands in her hips and surveying the ruin that was, apparently, her queendom. “Come along, Fenris. We might as well do something about this wreck.”


	2. Petty family squabble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of course it turned out the answer to the question ‘Is Odin going to sulk about this for all eternity?’ was: Yes, and a bit longer.

Of course it turned out the answer to the question ‘Is Odin going to sulk about this for all eternity?’ was: Yes, and a bit longer.

And on top of that, he was going to pre-emptively ruin Hela’s relationship with her brothers before she ever met them. Because one thing could be said about Odin (a lot of things could be said about Odin) and it was this: he was thorough.

Upon arriving at Valhalla Frigga had told Hela, but had Hela listened? No, because she still thought Frigga was a stuck-up bitch, and now she also swanned around pretending to be _wise_.  And, well, she wasn’t wrong, and certainly Hela couldn’t deny her her rightful place in Valhalla, and wouldn’t have, anyway. If she didn’t go to Valhalla, Frigga would have had to come down and live in Hel with her, and Hela honestly thought she had been punished _enough_ , thank you.

“Will you _stop_ ,” Hela snapped impatiently, batting Mjolnir aside with a disdain she should probably be reining in. It wasn’t doing her any favours with Thor.

Loki, somewhat quicker on the uptake, stood silently to the side, brow furrowed in thought. Hela thought he might be arriving to several unpleasant conclusions, and the even more unpleasant realisation that someone was going to have to explain those to his brother.

It was no wonder Odin had decided to wait right up until he was expiring before dropping this little bit of truth on Thor’s lap. Hela was half tempted to go back where she’d come from and wait until someone killed Thor. And really, all one would have to do is wait. Of course, then she’d have to deal with him wherever he ended up, but that was a problem she could deal with well down the line. After Thor was done having a temper tantrum at his father, probably.

“Oh, enough,” she said eventually, exasperated, and caught Mjolnir by the handle.

This had the happy effect of _blowing Thor’s mind_.

“Ii’s not possible,” he breathed, horrified.

“Darling, you have no idea what’s possible,” Hela said smugly, tossing Mjolnir over her shoulder where she lay, silent and stunned, on the grass. “Father gave you a hand-me-down. Mjolnir was created for _me_.”  

“But—” Thor stopped, seemingly not knowing where that objection was going.

Hela let the silence lie for a moment.

“Look,” she said finally. “We started off on the wrong foot. I forgive you.”

“You—” Thor frowned.

“Anyway, there’s no need to fight about it,” Hela continued. “You’ve always thought you were the firstborn, which is bully for you, but I’m not without sympathy. Let us simply take this to the great council and have them decide which of us has a more legitimate claim to the throne.”

“The council,” Thor repeated slowly.

“Yes. You know, the pile of arrogant two-faced, racist, sexist, split-tongued, wrinkled old dimwits our father insisted on pretending were wiser than the average boulder and therefore fit to advise him on matters he decided all by himself anyway.”

“Oh, _them_ ,” Loki muttered dryly.

“They have been through many wars,” Thor said through gritted teeth.

“So has Odin’s horse, but I bet no one asks _him_.”

“Thor,” Loki started tentatively. “You heard Odin. She has a claim to the throne.”

“He denied it to her!”

“He denied it to you too,” Hela replied. Thor and Loki stared at her. “I’ve been in Hel, not in a windowless dungeon. I’ve seen what you two have been up to.”

“That was a long time ago.”

 “Seven mortal years is hardly long. Why, your beard hasn’t even grown.”

“Thor—”

“No,” Thor interrupted his brother with an air of finality very much like his father’s. “We are not taking her to Asgard.”

“Alright,” Hela linked her hands and inhaled deeply. “I don’t think you quite understand—well life, to be honest, but I can only deal with one problem at a time. Asgard is—”

But apparently Hela wasn’t the only one out of patience with this recalcitrant child, because just as she began to explain the complex, convoluted, often frankly nonsensical laws of Asgard, the rainbow bridge slammed down on them and sucked them right up.

“No!” Thor roared, and attempted to kick Hela.

For Hel’s sake.

By the time they landed in the observatory, Hella had golden strands of her tangled in her fingers, Loki’s right eye was swelling up, and Thor’s nose was broken.

Hela made a sound of distaste and tried to shake the hair off her fingers, eyeing the observatory with a sharp eye.

“Heimdall,” Thor said, voice congested as blood run freely down his face. “ _Why_?”

“Time is short,” Heimdall said, twisting the sword to shut the bridge as Mjolnir dropped with a dull _thunk_ on the floor. “We cannot waste it with petty family squabbles.”

“Petty—” Thor started to squawk, but had to cut himself off to yelp with Loki waved at his nose to heal it.

“When did you even come back?”  he asked Hemidall, rubbing his clever fingers over his swollen eye sulkily.

“When you left. Good news spread fast.”

Hela stopped listening for a while, because as she stood there suddenly the mellow warmth of Asgard suffused her, sinking into her veins like molten gold, restoring her from the inside out. She could feel it spread like a spider’s web, like lightning, from her core out to her fingertips, her toes, her hair. It healed her, repaired her—recognised her at the rightful heir to the throne and whispered allegiance in her mind.

 _Take up the sword and spear_ , it murmured, low and insidious.

For a moment, she saw it. Herself, Fenris, the Berserkers, her necroblades. All that and nothing more was necessary to continue to conquer the realms her father had shied away from. She would fall upon the universe like a shadow, like the plague, and drown it in hate and blood and madness.

The victory. The _glory_. The hunger rose in her, a black bottomless pit, and Death twined around her fingertips like tar, reaching, reaching—

“The Mad Titan moves,” Heimdall said loudly.

Hela blinked at him slowly.

She saw Loki grow still and pale. So did Thor, who half-turned to frown at his brother.

“As do most things his size,” Hela said. “Slowly, and with leisure.”

“No,” Hemidall replied, great golden eyes unblinking. “He has purpose. And direction.”

“And is he headed here?” Hela inquired curiously. “Because I’d dearly love to have a little chat with him. Clear up some confusion in the air regarding my opinion of his deeds, misdeeds, and just general existence. On the matter of his existence indeed I have _much_ to say. But, you might have noticed, I kind of have a succession debate problem on my hands—”

“There _is_ none,” Thor growled.

Hela pointed a warning finger at his face.

“He is coming,” Heimdall interrupted loudly. “For the stone we have hidden.”

Hela tilted her head. “The stone,” she said slowly. “Hidden. Here. In Asgard?”

“Yes.”

“We have a _stone here_?”

“Space.”

“We have the _space stone?_ ”

“Yes,” Loki cut in, glaring at the ceiling. “Yes, we do. Yes, he kept it. Yes, it is in the vaults, and yes, the Titan knows, could we stop with the obvious question and move on the what we’re going to _do_?”

Hela seriously considered taking the bridge all the way down to Hel and turning Odin into a greyish paste, then reviving him, then doing it again. The only thing that stopped her was that then she’d have to put up with _Frigga_ , on top of everything else, and honestly. No.

“Obviously,” she said arching a brow. “We go to war.”

 


	3. Knowhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The Mind stone is in Midgard,” Thor said through clenched teeth, releasing Loki with a final, vindictive little shake.
> 
> Good Hel, why? The Midgardians were barely children and would break into pieces if you blew on them too hard.

“Most of the stuff in the Vault is fake,” Hela explained when the Council finished kicking up a fuss about her being Queen and moved along to kicking up a fuss about the Gauntlet being in the Vault and therefore Thanos not being a real threat.

“Why do we have fake stuff in the Vault?”  Thor frowned at her.

“Because the real Gauntlet was lost, and it made more sense to have the Universe believe we had it than them looking around and tearing things apart in search of it,”  Loki guessed.

“Indeed,” Hela agreed.

“So Thanos found it,” one of the councilmen said heavily.

“No, lost as in _destroyed_ ,” Hela replied. “It was flung to the heart of a star. The Stones would survive it, but the Gauntlet was not created with them, but for them.”

“Then he had another one made,” Thor paced the length of the Throne Room, very consciously not glancing at where Hela lounged obnoxiously on the throne. He had bent the knee, temporarily, to age and custom. Hela was a seasoned general, and the threat of the Mad Titan had moved the Council into putting her in the throne until further thought could be given to the matter. “How?”

“Only one creature in the universe capable enough,” Hela replied.

“The Dwarves of Nidavellir,” Heimdall finished heavily. “But not of their own volition. They were forced—”

“Yes, yes, tragic,” Hela waved a hand. “They are mourned, etcetera. Carry on.”

“Why now?” Thor demanded, jaw working. “He had to wait until Father died?”

“This is not the work of a few hours,” Heimdall pointed out.

“Most likely Thanos moved when Odin left Asgard,” Hela nodded. “With Odin distracted and Loki failing _abysmally_ at being a King, the way was clear for him to go to Nidavellir.”

Thor rounded on Loki and caught him by the front of his tunic, teeth bared.

“So this _is_ your fault!”

“Are they always like this?” Hela asked Heimdall.

“They’ve been worse.”

“Enough,” Hela said, rising from the throne and descending the steps slowly. Her cape dragged behind her across the stone, whispering, made of pure writing darkness. Hela was restored now to her full power and glory, could feel the golden wrath of Asgard in her veins. Odin might have wanted to be a peaceful king, but Asgard was not a peaceful realm. A peaceful realm would treasure scholars, rather than mock them, and Loki would have been the favourite son instead of Thor.

“We have the Space stone. Where are the others?”

“The Mind stone is in Midgard,” Thor said through clenched teeth, releasing Loki with a final, vindictive little shake.

Good Hel, _why_? The Midgardians were barely children and would break into pieces if you blew on them too hard.

Hela started counting on her fingers. “That’s two. No one knows where Soul is – it’s been missing for millennia.”

“Odin sent the Reality stone to the Collector in Knowhere,” Loki added.

Hela lifted another finger.

“Thanos has the Reality stone,” Heimdall chipped in. “He destroyed the Nova Core—”

“Tragic,” Hela said dismissively, adding another finger. “Time?”

“Midgard,” Heimdall answered.

Thor looked at him sharply. “What? There are two stones in Midgard?”

“A powerful sorcerer guards it.”

“He will head for Midgard next,” Thor said tightly, concern drawing harsh lines across his face. His whole body tensed with the need to run to Midgard and put his hammer to use.

“I don’t think so,” Hela shook her head. “Loki’s frankly astonishing failure to conquer Midgard must have taught Thanos some caution. The Power stone won’t be enough to claim two other Stones – he needs another one. He won’t come for the Space stone; he will leave Asgard for last, if he thinks he can manage it. So he will either look for Reality or hunt down Soul.”

“The certain one first,” Thor guessed.

“Indeed,” said Hela, brushing by him. “We go to Knowhere.”

* * *

 

But they were late.

“Who are you?” the Midgardian demanded furiously, aiming his—toy? Hela didn’t know what that was, but it didn’t look like it could stir her hair, let alone make a scratch.

“The Queen of Asgard,” Loki volunteered, always willing to score himself a couple points in someone’s good book.

“The Goddess of Death,” Hela corrected, because she had no good book. “Did Thanos put the Stone into the Gauntlet?”

“Yes,” the female said softly, eyes overrun by tears.

Bloody Hel. Hela had been harbouring the admittedly thin but rather precious hope Thanos didn’t actually know how to use the Gauntlet—that he would flounder with it, and give them enough time to catch up. But if he knew how to seal the Stones into it, then he knew more than Hela wanted him to.

“And Gamora,” the Midgardian added, voice breaking.

“What’s Gamora?” Frowned Thor.

Who cares, wondered Hela, and tuned them out as they argued about whatever that was. She wondered idly down the steps to where the people of Knowhere lay dead in the ruins, buffeted by the warm breeze of the burning fires. The soldiers of Asgard spread far and wide, looking for survivors, closing the eyes of the dead.

“Hela,” Thor called eventually, bounding down the steps toward her, red cape sailing like a blood banner behind his broad shoulders. “Gamora is Thanos’ daughter. Quill says she knows where the Soul stone is.”

Hela nodded slowly.

“Will he be unstoppable if he gets it?” Thor pressed.

“Nothing is unstoppable. Not even me. But he will be difficult. Heimdall, where is he now?”

But Heimdall was silent. Hela turned around and moved slowly back up the slope, ignoring Thor’s increasingly concerned calls for the watcher.

Heimdall was standing where they had left him, next to where they had landed. He was staring at his hands, frowning, blinking slowly.

“Is it all gone?” Hela, who knew tactical advantage, asked.

“No,” Heimdall replied quietly. “But he is obscured to me. I cannot see him.”

“I suppose we are lucky he didn’t take your eyes entirely,” Loki muttered.

“Thanos likes to think himself merciful,” Hela shrugged. “At least until he loses his temper. Like most tyrants, he operates under the illusion that, so long as he spills no blood himself, he’s kind enough.”

Thor frowned at her, but said nothing, looking disturbed.

“We need to find Gamora,” the Midgardian said stubbornly. He appeared to have quickly gotten over the shock of meeting gods in the flesh—then again, he appeared to be travelling with an upright talking rat, so why would the Goddess of Death be a surprise?

“Oh, sure,” Hela agreed. “And how, precisely?”

“You’re gods,” the Midgardian snapped. “You’re telling me you’ve got no tricks up your sleeves?”

“Her sleeves are very tight,” the big blue-tinged man said reasonably.

“If Thanos gets the location of the stone out of her,” Thor started.

“When,” Loki interrupted firmly.

“We’re wasting time!” the talking rat snapped loudly. “We gotta go find them!”

Hela really had no time to waste like this. She paced away, giving them her back, surveying the destruction. She didn’t particularly care about the girl—she barely cared about her brothers, and even that intermittently—but she did pose a definite danger.

Ideally, Gamora would have died before Thanos got his hands on her. Second best, she’d die right after. Third option, she died before she could open her mouth. But even Hela could not kill across the vastness of the Universe without knowing who or what she was aiming for.

In times past, she and Odin would have sent a hunter down to eliminate her, but a hunter would be difficult to come across now and time was short.

The girl would break, but there was still a chance Thanos would not manage to get Soul. The stone was sentient in its own right, and demanded steep sacrifice. Would Thanos be willing?

Yes. Yes, he would.

There was a hierarchy to the Stones. If Thanos got Soul, the other Stones would be more willing to bend to his will. Power, Reality, and Soul.  Those three would be enough to conquer Mind and Time. And once he had all of those, he would come for Space.

Asgard was powerful, and Hela was undefeated as a general. But to risk the entire existence of the Universe on her ability to lead and command an army that, while powerful, was small, was hubris. And that was a sin she’s long since been cured of. If she used the army, the Einherjar, rose the Valkyrie and awakened the Berserkers, there was still a chance she’d succeed only on destroying the realm rather than stopping Thanos.

What, then, was the best course of action?

“Midgard,” she said aloud, stopping the argument at her back. She turned around, dissolving her crown and letting her hair cascade down her back in a loose sheet. “We must get to Mind and Time before he obtains Soul.”

“He has sent an emissary after Time,” Heimdall’s voice was strong again. He’d gotten over his discomfort at being blocked from seeing Thanos. “They fly now in a ship away from Midgard.”

“And their destination?”

“Titan.”

“Then we go to Titan.”

“The Einherjar?” Thor asked.

“You would take them only to slaughter. They’re not strong enough to stand up to the Titan. It will be me, you, Loki—perhaps Sif and your friends. Certainly Hogun—he knows what he’s doing. Heimdall, return to Asgard and man the bridge. Gather the sorcerers and have them find a way to track Thanos. I want to know where he is, what he is doing. Send Fenris across to me immediately. And ready the defences. Should Thanos prevail, he must _not_ get his hands on the Tesseract.”

“Perhaps I would be most useful in Asgard?” Loki hazarded as Heimdall took the brudge back to the observatory and readied to follow Hela’s orders.  

“Perhaps you would care to grow some courage,” Hela suggested. “And quickly.”

She threw her head back and summoned her helm, braiding together darkness into indestructible metal. Thor twisted Mjolnir in his hands, restless for battle. The bridge slammed back down, depositing Fenris on the ground next to her. The great wolf shook his shaggy fur, eyes glittering, and Sif and the Warriors Three edged consciously away from him and his big teeth and sharp claws.

“I think it’s past time I reminded Thanos not to play with death,” Hela mused, hoisting herself up onto Fenris’ back.

“We’re coming with you,” the Midgardian said doggedly.

“Whatever,” Hela replied dismissively. “I’m not your mother, do what you want. But be advised—if you get in my way, I will slice you in half.”

“I think I’m in love,” said the rat.


	4. Titan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “And I should just trust you?” Stark spat at him. “You and Xena the warrior sociopath over here?”
> 
> Hela was so honestly baffled at his imprudence that she had nothing to say.

“You,” Hela said incredulously. “ _You_ think you can take on the Mad Titan? A half-dead mortal, barely a sorcerer, and a _child_?”

“Hey, now, miss,” the toddler interjected.

“Barely a sorcerer?” the carrier of the Time stone sputtered.

“Are you truly this stupid?” Hela continued, ignoring him. “Truly this hideously arrogant?”

“Stark,” Thor started tightly. “Why bring the boy?”

“I didn’t bring him!” the man in the armor complained, throwing up his hands. “He brought himself!”

“I wanted to help,” the child volunteered.

“What help could you possibly be?” Loki wondered.

“You shut up, psycho,” Stark snapped at Loki.

“You watch your mouth, mortal,” Loki answered dangerously.

“Everyone shut up,” Hela said lowly, darkness and violence rising within her chest. “We waste time. I am here for the Time stone. Surrender it.”

“I don’t think so,” the sorcerer said grimly. “I made a sacred vow to guard it.”

“I care little for your vows and less for your life,” Hela warned. “Give it up or I will take it.”

“Strange, listen to me,” Thor stepped forward, putting himself strategically, but rather stupidly, between Hela and the three Midgardians. “Thanos probably has the Soul stone and must be coming to get this one.”

“So we stop him,” said Stark, spreading his arms. “We have a plan, we’re already here, he’s coming to us, let’s do it. You guys are welcome to help.”

“Help,” Hela repeated slowly.

“Of course we would,” the blue-tinged imbecile said, tilting his head. Quill glared at the sky.

“You know not what you face,” Thor stressed out. “Thanos has gathered three stones, and even before that he was dangerous enough. We can better defend the stone in Asgard.”

“It’s better we destroy him somewhere unpopulated,” Strange argued.

“A battle in a desolate landscape is never better than one in a well-known territory, surrounded by seasoned warriors,” Loki replied. “Asgard makes more sense—and we waste time arguing.”

“And I should just trust you?” Stark spat at him. “You and Xena the warrior sociopath over here?”

Hela was so honestly baffled at his imprudence that she had nothing to say.

Heimdall had not been wrong – the sorcerer was powerful. But he was merely a burning match next to Loki’s blinding, unfathomable power, and Loki had fallen to Thanos like a rootless, untethered tree. The sorcerer could not succeed, vows or not, and Hela was past the point of diplomacy and patience. She meant to leave with the Time stone, and if she had to churn through Thor’s little friends to do it, well, Thor was long-lived and young. He’d make new ones.

Iron Man was still speaking. Hela knew him well. Death clung to him like sticky tar, a persistent parasite. Eventually it would devour him. But he stood upright under the weight, this little mortal man, and some measure of respect was owed.

That didn’t mean she wouldn’t swiftly decapitate him to obtain the stone, and he was mouthy, and not really making a case to preserve his limbs and life. Not to even mention the toddler he’d brought along. Hela despised the mere idea of child soldiers, and the boy’s presence made her incandescently angry. Superhuman or not, this child had not yet been alive long enough to see one turning of Asgard around its star.  

“We waste precious time,” Loki snarled.

Indeed, they did. Hela exhaled and brought her hands up to summon her helm – and stopped.

She felt it. The disturbance from Asgard, like a turbulent ripple. The Golden Realm had its own defenses, powerful and towering, but all of them necessitated permission to be deployed, and permission required the monarch to be on the throne or near it. The unfolding of such brutal countermeasures should never be done lightly from a distance.

She exhaled.

“Thor, handle this,” she ordered, and waved a hand to slit a portal into existence. Traveling by bridge was less taxing, but if this was urgent enough to make the ancient magic flinch, she couldn’t spare the time.

To her surprise she stepped through the portal right into the Vault, where chaos reigned and fire blazed. Asgard had redirected her portal from the throne room.

Her portal wasn’t the only one in the room either. Just as she scanned her eyes across the devastation, the blue portal closed, silent, leaving no energy trace.

She realised what it meant with a sinking, anxious feeling turning her gut into stone. She roved her eyes across the room and saw that the pedestal the Tesseract had sat upon lay on its side, cracked down the middle, defenses shattered.

“How?” she wondered aloud, dread curling white-hot through her veins. Another Stone lost, stolen from the very belly of Asgard. Einherjar lay dead at her feet, some of them in pieces. Scientists had fared no better, though her deaths appeared to have been less gruesome. Snuffed out like lights by the Reality stone, most likely.

“We attempted to locate him,” one survivor gasped, getting to his knees with effort. “The Tesseract knew him, we thought—“

“The Space stone is a doorway, not a bloodhound,” Hela snapped. “You have just delivered a stone right into the Mad Titan’s hands!”

“We needed the tactical advantage of his location,” he pleaded.

“It would have been a better tactical advantage of _prevent him getting the stone_ ,” Hela raged. “You bloody imbecile – you had better hope that if he succeeds, either or both of us fall to him, because I vow that if we survive _you will regret it_.”

How could they have been so bloody foolish? Thanos would have revealed himself eventually . they would have met him in battle somewhere, and stopped him, not easily, perhaps, not without loss, but it could be done, so long as he didn’t have all the stones.

Power, Reality, Space, Soul. Only two more and he would be as close as he could ever get to a god. And now that he had Space, how could she guard the others from him? The only realm outside Space’s reach was her own, Hel, but the stones were creation itself – they would not stay there happily. And Thanos would find his way into it eventually, formidable as her defenses were.

Even so, Hel might be the best bet. In Hel he would have to face the Berserkers, and the Valkyrie, and a host of other obstacles. Hela knew it well, knew the realm’s defenses and capabilities, knew the terrain. She could summon allies to it, for not only Aesir ended up in Hel and Valhalla. Odin, Frigga, Bor, countless great warriors from times past – they were all there.

Take the stones to Hel, rally an army? But to face the Mad Titan with four out of six Infinity Stones… it would be no easy task. And unleashing the Berserkers was always a bloody gamble. It’d been millennia since she last commanded them. Could she still do it?

She growled and turned around, storming out of the Vault. She wasted time in aimless strategizing when she should be finding the Mind stone instead. Thor and Loki and the others could get the Time stone. There was no time to lose now, she needed to ensure both stones were out of Thanos’ reach.

“My Queen! “ an Einherjar skidded into the hallway, out of breath. “Heimdall has collapsed!”

“Collapsed?” This stopped Hela in her steps. Heimdall? Collapsed? _Heimdall?_

 _No_. Suddenly he knew her mistake. Ice churning through her veins, heart thundering, she slit a portal open into Titan.

She arrived just in time for Thor’s scream to tear through her, and for Loki’s neck to snap in Thanos’ hand.

“Holy shit,” someone breathed.

“No,” Thor sobbed, struggling to lift himself on shaking arms. His left eye was a bloody, smoking ruin.

“You dare,” Hela heard herself say, and all activity around her appeared to stop at once. Thanos turned to her, expression shifting to respectful joy.

“My lady,” he said, and bowed.

Hela’s eyes were stuck on Loki. He was very clearly dead, of course – she’d felt his crossing, and she could see his body was mangled beyond repair. Blood dropped from his eyes, ears, his nose – his lips were split, his head hung at an unnatural angle.

Not even two millennia old, this boy, this child her father had taken in. She’d seen him grow from a distance, the clever little mischief maker. Grow from a sullen, scared creature into the most resplendent sorcerer born from Jotunheim in thousands upon thousands of years – the true heir to the ice magic, a gift upon the realms.

Loki had been a poorly wielded weapon, and all he’d needed to reach his full potential had been someone unwilling to put up with his nonsense. Hela had thought to do that once this problem was dealt with, and help Loki down along a much more fruitful path, better suited to his skills and desires.

And now. Now Loki was dead. A mere day after meeting him. She had lost him.

Thor was wounded, crawling, trying to get closer to his body. Thor, son of Odin, God of Thunder, _her brother, crawling_.

“You _dare_ ,” she breathed, and she could feel her helm coming up, the darkness rising within her. It lay close to the surface here in this ravaged land, so burdened with death and horror.

“Oh fuck,” someone said quietly. Quill? Probably.

She would have her revenge, and it would not be swift, and it would not be painless. She was owed, and the debt was great and fathomless. One brother, dead, one brother, crippled, the Tesseract, stolen. Thanos had insulted her mote today and in all of his miserable existence, and he had no notuon of the depth of her hatred and willingness. She would _destroy_ him.

Destroy—destroy…

“Oh,” she exhaled, rage breaking like a wave upon a rocky shore. In the calmness left behind by the death of her churning rage, clarity emerged, crystalline and pure.

The Stones were creation – its six aspects taken form, birthed with the beginning of the Universe. But creation, like life, cast a shadow. A seventh aspect, which never became a stone, for it was too powerful, too all-encompassing to become a single simple thing.

Thanos had killed her brother, breached her realm, and injured her prince.  Stolen from her.

Now she would steal from him. That which he desired most – his goal and fate in life.

She turned to the wizard, who’d wisely taken up position behind her, where her body and power shielded him from Thanos. She reached out a hand, caught him by the front of his robes, and dragged him in close.

“Hold on to that stone,” she said silkily, and tore open a portal so brutally that space and time around her warped. Iron Man cried out and grabbed onto her wrist, alarmed. The child’s helm closed around his face, preparing for battle. Hela reached out and grabbed him by the back of the neck, shaking him like a misbehaving puppy.

“Whoa!” Quill spread his hands at her, placating.

She sent out a tendril of magic, felt the Bifrost respond to her command and plummet down to Titan, whisking away her brothers, alive and dead, and their allies.

Iron Man, the child, and the wizard all came with her through the portal down to the roots of Yggrdasil.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ve looked forward in time,” the man said stubbornly. “Into millions of possible futures. Only in one of them did we succeed, only—“
> 
> “The Time stone is blind to me,” Hela said condescendingly. “I am not in the flow of the world, but outside of it. I do not age or decay or fall by time. It cannot touch me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter this time, sorry. I don't want to leave you guys without any updates for too long, I know how difficult it can get to follow a story. This fic won't be very long anyway, maybe 10 chapters or so. 
> 
> Thank you all for your lovely comments - I haven't written anything in years, so I'm very happy to know I can still sort of pull it off.

“Don’t try to grasp it,” she said when the Midgardians feel to their knees, discombobulated and confused. “It’s rather too large for your minds. Simply breathe and let it flow.”

“Where are we?” Stark gritted out, grabbing the child by the arm and dragging him closer. The boy looked completely disoriented and very pale. Hela sighed and unclipped her cloak, draping it over him. It would offer some reprieve – a buffer, of sorts, from the sifting reality around them. The boy melted into it, obviously relieved.

“The roots of the realms,” Hela answered, pushing her hair over her shoulders. “Here, not even the Space stone can find us.”

“Hiding is a patch solution,” Stark growled, climbing unsteadily to his feet. He stumbled, gave a step, collapsed back to his hands and knees panting noisily.

“Patches are sometimes a sufficient solution,” she pointed out, but shook her head. “I do not mean to hide, Tony Stark. I mean to take care of this situation completely and absolutely. I pause only to give you time to adjust.”

“Where—the roots of the…” the boy said weakly, eyes wide and frightened. Still, for all his fear, there was a glimmer of fascinated interest in his eyes, and Hela found rather a soft spot for the child. She reached down to grab him by the arm and haul him to his feet, steadying him.

“The roots of Yggrdasil, the tree of life,” she answered. “No place for mortals, but you won’t be here long. We must walk, though, some distance.”

Stark was gathering himself with impressive speed, and the wizard was already adapting, clearly well acquainted with unstable realities.

“Where are we going?” Stark demanded.

“To the beginning and the end of it all,” Hela answered, squeezing the boy’s shoulder before letting him go and walking away. “Thanos is becoming too powerful to be simply defeated. Any attempt made to keep the stones from him will only stall him. With Power, Reality, Space and Soul at his fingertips, he is near on invincible. There is only one way to prevent him getting all the stones now.”

“It won’t work,” the wizard said, catching on.

Hela turned to him, baffled. “Certainly it will work.”

“I’ve looked forward in time,” the man said stubbornly. “Into millions of possible futures. Only in one of them did we succeed, only—“

“The Time stone is blind to me,” Hela said condescendingly. “I am not in the flow of the world, but outside of it. I do not age or decay or fall by time. It cannot touch me.”

“And it can’t see your effects on the world,” the wizard breathed.

“It cannot account for me, or my decisions, or my actions.”

“What’s the plan?” Stark asked, already rearranging his mind around this, mind racing in calculations. Formidable, for a mortal. Pity he’d be so short-lived. She might have had some fun with him.

“Oh, it’s very simple,” she answered. “We’re going to walk a bit, and then we’re going to poke at something very angry with a very long stick, and hope that it wakes up in a good enough mood to listen before it eats us.”

“Um, I don’t think… that doesn’t sound very good,” the child offered hesitantly.

“It’s not my most faceted strategy,” Hela admitted agreeably. “But it _will_ work.”

Stark raised a hand. “Wait, what are we saying here, dumb it down for me.”

“She wants to destroy the stone,” the wizard climbed to his feet, shaking off his disorientation like a shaggy fur. For a mortal, he was bright enough.

Stark paused. “We can do that?”

“Anything can be destroyed,” Hela replied. “Everything can be destroyed. You only need a strong enough force to counteract its existence.”

“What can counteract a mystical indestructible intergalactic stone?” the boy asked, bewildered.

“Nothing,” the wizard answered.

Hela nodded.

“Nothing, Utter nothingness. The void.”

“And the… void… is going to be testy when it wakes up from its nap?” Stark asked doubtfully.

“Not the void,” Hela said impatiently. “Its gatekeeper. You are all well enough now, let us walk.”

She started away, certain they would follow, if not because they agreed with her plan at least because she was the only one here who knew where they were and where they had to go. Hela had not been here for a long time, of course, trapped as she had been, but this was not a path you easily forgot. In her early years she had traversed it easily enough, once she had come fully into the promise of her blood.

Time warped at the roots of the great tree, and Hela never knew to pay much attention to it, but she knew the mortal child would care should they lose decades to this little jaunt, so she hastened her steps and walked with purpose. Around them, liquid reality shifted like the great dunes of a desert, like the frigid depths of an unexplored ocean. Thousands of different dimensions fractured and shattered and were born in seconds. Empires rose and fell like the sun in a short day.

Hela and her mother had taken quite a bit of pleasure of traveling these old pathways, watching realms be born and perish. Creation and nothingness, looped, entwined.

“Mr Stark, I don’t feel so well.”

“Look only ahead,” Hela advised, without turning. “This is a dangerous place for a young mind. If you feel as though you are being pulled, or called, close the cloak around you. It will shelter you. It discomfort becomes pain, speak up. I will lead you.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” the boy murmured.

For a while, there was silence.

“So, uh,” Stark began eventually, unnerved by their surroundings. “How do you know Thor, again?”

There had been little time for introductions, after Stark had blown his lid at Loki – a situation Thor had taken offense at, though why exactly Hela could not discern, considering that Stark’s resentment towards Loki was well-earned and perfectly legitimate.

“I am Hela Odinsdottir, true firstborn of Asgard. He’s my younger brother.”

“Younger bro—I didn’t even know he had a sister, _what_?”

Hela smiled mirthlessly. “Oh, he didn’t know until but hours ago either. It was quite a shock.”

“Oh my god, more Asgardian royal family drama, just what we needed.”

“Indeed, my family truly is the gift that keeps on giving,” Hela drawled. “But no need to worry. I have little interest in your realm and certainly won’t conquer it.”

“You could try,” the wizard said defensively.

“I could,” she agreed, smirking. “And I would succeed. Perhaps in a few millennia, when you are more advanced and worthy.”

She wouldn’t, actually. What a hassle that would be. But Stark and the wizard seemed outraged and scandalized, and it was amusing.

“Sorry about, um, your brother Loki,” the boy offered quietly.

“Hm. Oh, it’s alright. I’m the Goddess of Death, I can visit him anytime. He exists in my realm, now.”

“Asgard is… the realm of the dead?” Stark frowned.

“The other one,” Hela corrected placidly. “I have two. What joy. Double the tasks. Half the free time.”

“I’m sure Thor would be happy to help,” the wizard grumbled.

“Thor is not ready to rule,” Hela replied with an eyeroll.

“You seemed pretty upset he was dead considering you can have tea with him anytime,” Stark pointed out.

“Well, it is as though you had your brother living in your home, and then suddenly someone forced him to relocate to a different continent. You can visit it, sure, but it is a bother. Besides,” she paused, mood turning dark. “I do not like uppity little god wannabes taking things from me.”

She paused and turned around to face them, and they recoiled. She reached her hand up to touch her face and discovered the roots of the great tree had stripped away the glamour, revealing her true face, half of which was bone-white skull. Ah, well.

“My realm has been violated and stolen from, my brother is dead, my other brother is resembling our father rather more quickly than I’m pleased with, all of reality and life are threatened, and all of this by a disgusting sniveling little worm who got a knot in his throat because we rejected him a couple thousand years ago.”

“You—what?” Stark blinked.

“Oh yes, I know _Thanos_ ,” Hela spat, turning around again to walk. “I know him well, the festering little purple pustule. He came to Asgard and offered Odin knowledge in exchange for becoming a God. He's in love with some or other form of Death, some lesser deity with a fragment of my essence in her, and thought that becoming a God would please her. Odin, bartering with a Titan! Honestly, what gall—and when Odin and I laughed him off the land, he got it in his head he needs to _impress us_. And so all this nonsense is because some girl is not inclined to spread her le—“

“Uh,” Stark cut in quickly. “Child present. Let’s keep it PG-13.”

Hela scoffed. But they had arrived, and so she stopped to reach back and catch the boy by the wrist, keeping him behind her. Then she turned to the wizard.

“The stone,” she said, offering her palm. “Give it up, because it’s going into the abyss, and it either goes alone or you go with it.”

The wizard frowned, conflicted. Hela had half a mind to press, or to rip him limb to limb and get the stone herself, but she was an experienced commander. She knew when to wait. The man knew her solution was the only permanent one. He only needed to get his own vows and pride out of the way. He was not a foolish creature. He’d arrive there soon enough.

By her estimation and understanding of the passage of mortal time, they had been walking for near on five hours. The more they dallied here, the more this place altered their vulnerable minds. A few more days would drive them mad, or turn them insto solething else entirely.

But the sorcerer closed his eyes, and raised his hand. Between his index and thumb, reality broke apart and split, and the Time stone revealed itself, shining green and proud.

Hela took it, its weight warm in her palm.

“What now?” Stark asked quietly.

“Stay right here and don’t draw attention,” Hela answered. “I would suggest you do not watch; what I will do is not meant for mortal eyes, and I’m not sure how it might affect you.”

“Peter,” Stark started immediately.

“Hey, no,” the boy started. “I’m not a kid, Mr. Stark.”

Stark turned wide, pleading eyes on Hela.

“His choice,” she shrugged, though she weaved darkness as a veil around them all, ready to spring up at any sign of trouble. Being a Queen truly was irritating—all this caring for others and protecting was time consuming. 

She stepped away, to where she sensed the edge was between existing and no longer being anything, alive or dead.

“Hello, old friend,” she called out, raising her voice into the blackness beyond. She sensed the shifting, the uncoiling of a brutal power, and smiled. “Rise and shine. Things to do, stuff to eat.”

Its great head rose out of the nothingness like a monster from a lake, slitted, double-pupil eyes and great snubbed nose, dark as ink and glistening like fresh blood.

“Jormungandr,” she greeted with a smile. “The time is not ripe for you to devour. It will come, I vow—you will split your jaw and swallow the worlds whole. But first, I’ve brought you a treat.”

The creature tilted its head, the size of a continent, and its long tongue slithered out in curiosity. It was in an indulgent mood, this day, which was fortunate, because Hela had chanced upon it once in a foul one and it had not been pleasant. The half of her face missing attested to that.

She raised her hand and opened her fingers so Jormungandr could see what she had brought it. Its pupils grew, then shrunk, greedy, hungry as it always was.

“Open up,” Hela murmured, and reared back, and flung out her arm.

The Time stone glimmered, sinking into the abyss, and then Jormungadr rose up and its jaws closed around it.

Everything shuddered. Hela threw up the veil of darkness around the mortals and braced, but even her power was not enough to shield her from the destruction of a part of creation. She landed hard on her shoulder, smacked her head on the ground and lay disoriented for a moment under the tangle of her hair, breathing painfully. The boy cried out, alarmed and concerned. What a precious child. Maybe she’d keep him.

Jormungandr gave a pleased hum that made the whole tree vibrate. Then, satisfied, it sank back into the void, and back into sleep, to wait, and wait.

Hela considered climbing to her feet. She should, really. Much to be done. A realm to rule. A war to fight. A brother to cremate.

She felt weighted down by it, the prospect of it all. Thousands of years imprisoned and she finally got out to see her brother die and have to fight an old fool. What joke. Was there no peace to be found, was the fighting never over? Was the universe’s appetite for its own destruction never satisfied? Millennia she had lived watching, and always a new threat arose.

Well, she for one could just stay here. This place was no threat to _her_ , and it was nice and quiet, and anyway without all six stones surely someone else could split Thanos’s skull open. Let them.

She closed her eyes and breathed.

Her hair still smelled of the oils the Valkyrie had used to prepare her when she had felt Odin dying. Spicy and earthen. The Valkyrie—who had died by her hand because her father had been too foolish to understand and respect the strength of women.

She opened her eyes again, scowling. Let them? Let someone else slay Thanos, who’d dared to steal from her, breach her realm, kill _her_ brother? Another worthless male who thought he had a right to her and her possessions, her world, her _blood_?

_Oh, I don’t bloody think so_ , she thought savagely, and sat up.

“Oh thank fuck,” Stark said, strangled. “Please get us the fuck out of here, _stat_.”

Hela sighed and climbed to her feet, combing her hair back with dignity.

“Alright, calm down. Come along.”

“Where to now?” the boy asked, reaching out for her arm, clearly frightened by the sight of the Serpent of the World, which—no wonder. Hela was pleased to see he was not too proud to ask fr her guidance when in need. What a delight. Truly, she had half a mind to keep him. What a formidable creature she could make him.

Hela took his hand and dragged her hood over his head, weaving flexible darkness around his fragile mind to shield it.

“You are formally invited to the home of the gods,” she said carelessly. “We’ll walk a bit, and then I’ll take us to Asgard.”

“Why all the walking?” The wizard asked curiously.

“Because if I open a portal here, that great big bastard is going to come to Asgard and eat _everything_ , and I’d rather not cause the end of all the worlds just yet.”

“Ah,” the wizard said quietly. “Makes sense.”

“Indeed,” she mocked, draping an arm over the boy’s shoulders. “I have been known to do so once every few thousand years. So,” she added, looking down at the boy. “What was your name again? Tell me about you, little boy. What are your _ambitions_?”

 


	6. Asgard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Well, some can,” Hela felt she needed to admit. “Very particular people who died in very specific… circumstances,” she paused, as the little kernel of unrest that had been seething on the back of her mind for hours finally began to bloom. “Oh. There’s an idea,” she breathed.
> 
> “Is there?” Peter asked, confused. “Is it a good one?”
> 
> “I don’t know yet,” Hela answered absently.

About twelve hours had gone by when Hela got them to the throne room in Asgard. The Midgardians were truly exhausted, she could see it. The boy leaned heavily on her, words having tapered out into mumbles a while ago. Stark’s shoulders drooped.

She sat Peter Parker down in the first step of the throne dais and straightened, exhaling, as Asgard’s magic flowed into her like mead. Tre trek through the roots had tired her, as well – shielding the mortals from the buffetings winds and shifting realities was exhausting.

The palace was silent and somber. In mourning? Loki had not been well-loved, but Thor’s grief and anger must have spread like a cloud.

“Thanos is still a threat,” she said softly. “A lot can be done with stones he’s managed to gather. His objective can still be achieved – simply in a more laborious, slower way. But there is no rush for it, now. We will rest, and start again tomorrow.”

“I’m good, I can do this all day,” Stark scoffed, stumbling sideways.

“Oh, sure,” Hela said amiably. She reached out a hand and shoved him lightly on the shoulder.

Stark squawked and sprawled gracelessly on the steps. He made a sound of protest and waved a hand in the air, not attempting to move again.

“Very capable,” Strange commented, sitting heavily down on the step next to Peter. “We’ll just wait here quietly, Your Majesty.”

“Good choice,” Hela replied, already done with the lost of them and their unending _needs_. “I’ll send someone to show you to quarters.”

She left them there, three helpless little creatures in the realm of the gods. A maid passing by got tasked with seeing to them. Hela put them out of her mind. There were still things that she needed to see to before she sought out her own bed.

The healing chambers of Asgard were their own standalone building to the west. It was a tall, soaring structure with great wide windows and abundant greenery. Aesir knew no illness and most wounds were inflicted by battle, and brought no shame – therefore privacy was hard to come by in the healing chambers, which were open-plan and sunny.

Loki had been laid down upon a cot, his arms folded across his stomach. He’d been stripped of his battle robes and dressed in the grey silks of the dead, shot through with accents in the colours of the House of Odin: swordmetal grey and vibrant red.

In death his glamour had faded. Against the deep blue of his skin, the ruin of bruises and cuts in his face was less noticeable. The swirling royal tattoos of Laufey’s bloodline had emerged, and Loki’s hair was a silken, shocking red spread on the pillows.

Thor sat next to him, hunched on a stood, face in his hands. He had not changed, though someone had seen to his wounds. When he lifted his head, Hela saw his eye was a dark, charred crater. A healing spell still worked inside it, pulsing amber with his heartbeat.

“What have you done?” he asked, voice raspy and low.

“I took care of the biggest problem. We must still war, but the threat has been brought down to a more manageable level.”

Thor nodded, and his eye fell back on Loki’s face. Hela remembered Thor was young, and Aesir were hardy. He was not familiar with death.

“Can you bring him back?”

Hela sighed and walked closer.

“He’s crossed into Valhalla. Only he can decide when to return.”

“We need him.”

“The situation’s not dire enough,” she dismissed. “We don’t need to call upon the heroes of old just yet. Let him have his rest. Let this be his choice.”

Thor stared at his brother for a long time.

“I didn’t even know he had red hair.”

Hela hummed and brought a stool closer to sit by Loki’s head. She examined his face for a moment. Frost lingered at the edges of his hairline, gathered in his eyelashes, scabbed over the cut in his lip. Someone had cleaned the blood. She took up one of his hands and looked at his black obsidian nails.

“It’s telling, isn’t it,” Thor said suddenly. Hela looked up. “The magic. How he looked in—in life.”

It took Hela a moment to understand, and she studied Loki’s face again.

“He was but a babe,” she said softly. “It was the magic that decided what he ought to look like. He only maintained the glamour out of instinct.”

“The magic chose to look like you for Odin.”

“Another lost child,” Hela said pensively. “One to replace the firstborn he discarded.”

“He loved you,” Thor argued.

“Perhaps,” Hela agreed. “But he loved his own idea of the world more. The idea of what Asgard, and he, could become.”

Thor had nothing to say to that. He appeared to understand that all too well. They sat in silence for a long time, before Thor shifted and started to press a comb gently through Loki’s dark red hair.

They worked together in silence, weaving the braids of a warrior. Thor’s braids were tighter, neater, closer to the scalp. Hela let him handle the hair high on Loki’s head, and took up the sides of his face which would be less visible in the wake. They braided gold and silver rings and green jewels, copper wires and magic charms that would glow. Hela took Loki’s right hand and slid the House of Odin signet ring on his cold, blue finger.

This was a goodbye for Thor, not Hela. But it soothed him to do this, to give Loki this last parting gift. His time, his love.

When they were done, and Loki was ready, she left Thor there alone. She didn’t try to get him to rest or go to bed. Sleep would not come to him, she could tell.

Even before Hela became who she was, death had never been a tragedy. A warrior born and bred, she had walked hand in hand with it all days of her long life. Her mother had died a rather inglorious, uncomplicated death–gone in an instant. Hela had not mourned her, though she had been angry, irritated, at her absence. And then, when she had finally come into her full powers, death had become nothing but a slight change. It was no ending, no limit.

She left the healing chambers and headed for the Palace. She would have to ask a maid where they had made her quarters. She had no intention of taking Odin’s bed, and surely her own quarters had long since been repurposed.

An Einherjar found her on the steps to the Palace and bowed.

“My Queen, we didn’t know if we should stop him.”

He gestured with his chin towards the Palace spires. Hela followed his eyes and spotted Peter Parker climbing slowly up the smooth metal.

“Leave him,” she decided. “That will be all.”

The man bowed again and took his leave. He crossed paths with Lady Sif as she came down the steps, head held high and proud.

“Come for Thor?” Hela asked.

Sif shook her head. “My brother.”

“Ah,” Hela nodded. “Any change?”

Sif looked troubled as she shook her head again.

“Heimdall is strong,” Hela consoled. “I’m certain he’ll overcome this. Keep me updated.”

“My Queen,” Sif bowed and walked away towards the healing chambers.

What an absolute mess. Hela was quite looking forward to lying in bed without anyone pushing their bloody _emotions_ in her general direction.

She sighed. Not quite yet, though.  With a flick of her wrist, she distorted reality and opened a gateway up into the tip of the tallest spire. Asgard was quiet this night; the wind was but a gentle breeze, stirring her dark hair. She reached up and twisted it into a bun, pinning it in place with a spear of darkness. It pulled against the nape of her neck, and she fussed until she got it to sit right.

She was just lowering her arms when Peter reached the top, looking sheepish.

“Sorry, ma’am. Is this ok?”

Hela waved a hand. “I gave you free run of the palace. How did you know I was waiting for you?”

“I have a sixth sense,” Peter answered, crawling closer and sprawling out on the floor next to where she was sitting, cross-legged. “The stars are different.”

“I expect so,” Hela replied. “You wouldn’t be able to see them from Earth. The distortion between the realms would blur out of the far-out galaxies. Asgard sits more or less in the center of the known universe, so there is very little distortion.”

Peter contemplated that for a long moment. “Can you see your realm from here?”

“Hel? No. Hel is closed to all but the dead, and well hidden.”

Peter sat up, fidgeting with the embroidery of his borrowed Aesir sleeping clothes. They were fine, muted off-white cotton with tiny embroidered silver leaves.

“Do all the dead go to your realm?”

Hela tilted her head. “A version of it. The dead go where they believe they belong, except for the Aesir—the magic that makes us long-lived binds us to Hel, and to Valhalla, if the circumstances are right.”

Peter was quiet for a long, long moment. Hela studied his down-turned profile.

“I’m sure mortals go somewhere as well,” she said gently.

Peter’s eyes flickered to her and away, bright, wet.

“You mortals have such strange ideas,” Hela mused. “Death is no end, it’s merely the change of one state of existence into another. Dying is like crossing a threshold. You walk through a gate, and it closes behind you.”

“Who determines what’s on the other side?”

“Your belief,” Hela repeated. “You can go through all your days lying to everyone, but you can never deceive yourself. In the end, you always know what you deserve.”

Peter frowned. “What about the horrible people who don’t think they’re horrible, like—like racists, or Nazis, or…”

Hela shrugged. “Death is not a game of fairness. And once they’re dead, what does it matter where they end up? They won’t be bothering you again.”

Peter seemed to chew that for a moment, turning it around in his head.

“You said—you could… visit?”

Hela shook her head. “I also said Hel is closed to all but the dead. I am neither alive nor dead—I am something else, so I can travel untouched. You are very much alive. Who have you lost?”

Peter turned his head away. “My parents. My uncle.”

“Well, parents do die,” Hela pointed out, unconcerned. “That’s what happens to the old generations. They would have died eventually anyway, you know.”

Peter turned around to stare at her with wide, hurt eyes. Hela arched her brows.

“You waste time being sad about something inevitable. Do you also feel sad that one day your Sol will die and swallow your planet, or that right now there is a whole realm decaying after thousands of years of existence?”

Actually, Peter did look crushed about that. Odin’s beard. He was precious.

“Oh, alright. Be sad, then. I certainly can’t stop you.”

She huffed and started braiding her hair.

Surprisingly, this made Peter smile. “You were doing so well there for a bit, and then it crashed,” he raised his hands and mimicked a falling vessel, hitting the ground and exploding.

“I’m not in the business of comforting children,” Hela sniffed.

There was a long silence as she finished braiding her hair over her shoulder, eyes half-lidded.

“Odin used to bring me here, when Asgard was young,” she mused. “We built the palace first, to shelter the people, and then built the city around it. From up here, we would sit and look out far, and watch over it.”

“Everything that touches the light?” Peter asked teasingly.

Hela furrowed her brows at him, confused. “Everything that didn’t fall off the bloody edge, actually—and some of it did. The magic was unstable, and the edges would crumble into the abyss regularly. We lost a lot of people.”

“Are they in Hel?”

“No. Hel is what we call an anchored realm. It didn’t solidify until Asgard’s own magic did, and it didn’t establish its own laws until I came into my own powers. All who died before that… I do not know where they’ve gone. I have never found them.”

Her mother among them. She had tumbled off the edge, drawn to a perilously unstable ledge by the nearby birth of a star over the southern horizon. Her wild, untamed, powerful mother with the easy smile and the sparks dancing around her fingertips and eyes. The first Goddess of Thunder and Lightning. Her temper had created thunderstorms and lightning bolts in realms that had never seen them. She had been the first Valkyrie, walking the fields of battle streaked in blood. She had ridden dragons through the realms and played with creatures older than time. She had worn the pelt of Fenris’ father on her back, after she hunted him down herself—the Wolf of the Worlds, the devourer of stars. She had found the pup and cooed over it like a child, and washed it, and entrusted it to Hela. _Be kind and love it. I killed his father, and now my daughter must be his mother._

Thor was a good heir to her magic. She would have liked Thor.

“So no one can return once they’ve gone.” Peter said quietly.

“Well, some can,” Hela felt she needed to admit. “Very particular people who died in very specific… circumstances,” she paused, as the little kernel of unrest that had been seething on the back of her mind for hours finally began to bloom. “Oh. There’s an idea,” she breathed.

“Is there?” Peter asked, confused. “Is it a good one?”

“I don’t know yet,” Hela answered absently.

She also didn’t know where to find it. Heimdall could not have seen it. His Sight had blurred before Thanos recovered the Soul stone.

“I need to see the Norns,” she decided, standing up. Her braid fell over her shoulder and began to unravel. Peter jumped to his feet.

“Oh no,” Hela pointed a finger at him. “I can go to the Norns because they can’t hurt me. _You_ , they’ll eat for dessert.”

“I’m not a kid, I can help!”

Hela have him a shrewd look. “The path you’re walking will lead you to conflict soon enough. No need to usher it in.”

She could see it, too. His powers were not entirely, purely Midgardian. There was something else there, older, larger. Peter’s temperament was well suited to control it, but such things didn’t wait forever. It would come for him, eventually.

“Besides,” she added, more ruthlessly. “The Norns think males are funny, so they’re always playing pranks and tricks to amuse themselves. You’ll be more a nuisance than anything else. Go to bed.”

Peter began to argue, but Hela stepped back and let darkness swallow her whole.

Always an excellent way to end a conversation, if you asked her. 


End file.
